We do not have unlimited resources to spend on unlimited healthcare. So it will either be bureaucrats in Whitehall, elected officials on revamped primary care trusts or GPs deciding what treatments are appropriate within the budget.

Personally, I would prefer that the person controlling spending on my healthcare has regular contact with me so that we can both decide the best course of treatment. An alternative is my experience with the American way. There, doctors order endless and mostly useless tests and treatments to avoid being sued, all paid for by insurance companies.

This results in sky-high insurance premiums which, if you cannot afford them, means you probably won't go to see a doctor, let alone have tests and treatments. This system means there is no such thing as a "postcode lottery" for healthcare but it does mean healthcare is provided only to those who can afford it or are lucky enough to have a job with healthcare insurance.

By all means let's have a debate about how best to provide healthcare, but let's not kid ourselves that concerns about budgets can be put to one side.

Jon Burden

London W14

It was outrageous that it cost £2m to police the Liberal Democrat conference. Sheffield no longer affords sanctuary for Nick Clegg who once believed in a fair city; patron for instance, of a charity that cares for destitute asylum seekers, but who has performed a U-turn on all his party's important policies. The government still hasn't closed Yarl's Wood and the alternative "pre-departure accommodation" is detaining children by a different name.

I think most would abhor the indignities that Clegg and his family have suffered in Sheffield, but his capitulation is not coalition government. There has to be some gain and it took Shirley Williams to stop the rot, providing that Nick Clegg has some influence on Cameron's destructive NHS tendency. It is more likely to be the BMA if anyone.

Dr Graham Ullathorne

Chesterfield

Derbyshire

Your reporter got the debate so wrong. It was a proper discussion with different views being put, the audience listening carefully and a vote at the end which was almost unanimous. It was grown-up politics.

I guess that a rational debate doesn't constitute news, but I am disturbed that the Observer would sink to the levels of the tabloids.

Jill Hope

Former Lib Dem parliamentary candidate

Milton Malsor

Northants

In the early months of 1947, immediately before the launch of the National Health Service, my parents spent the savings they had made for a house on medical care for their prematurely born twin sons.

In 2011, my widowed father's savings are being rapidly spent on his care in a residential dementia unit. Do these two events in Dad's life bookend his generation's aspirations to provide healthcare free at the point of need?

David Clitheroe

Chard

Somerset

In your Lib Dem conference report, St Ives MP Andrew George states: "The Lib Dems were the architects of the NHS. Don't let's become the architects of its demise."

I hadn't realised that Nye Bevan and Attlee were Lib Dems. This appears to be Stalinist rewriting of history!

Ike Gibson

Ullapool

Ross and Cromarty

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